“Where are you going? Heaven or hell?” asked a billboard beside a typically dull stretch of Interstate 65 halfway from Chicago to Indianapolis. Twenty miles south came another sign, this one more urgent than the last, a warning spelled out in white block type against a black background: “HELL IS REAL.”

IMS chairman Mari Hulman George has been ordering Indy 500 drivers to “start your engines” for longer than most of us have been alive. Today, another woman tried to butt in on her command, Kanye-style. Mari Hulman George wasn’t having any of it, and damn near backhanded the young lady.